Offbeat Oregon History podcast www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com)

The Femme Fatale, like most really satisfying tropes in fiction, is based on real life. And arguably, the closest Oregon has ever come to a real-life femme fatale worthy of Hammett’s pen was in early 1880s Portland, in what today is known as the Tenderloin — in the person of a gorgeous, hard-eyed 28-year-old brunette who called herself Carrie Bradley. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1882) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909e.carrie-bradley-femme-fatale-1of2-567.html)

In a race with Portland neophile Henry Wemme to be the first owner of an airplane in Oregon, Cornell-educated John Burkhart was two weeks too late; but unlike Wemme, he designed, built and flew his own machine. (Albany, Linn County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410d.310.burkhart-aviation-pioneer.html)

The geographical evidence isn't there; but every nearby Indian community has legends about the river tunneling underground for miles, and roughly similar accounts of the tunnel's collapse. What are the odds? (Near The Dalles, Wasco County; circa 1450 A.D.) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907c.bridge-of-the-gods-legend-and-truth.html)

Young Charley Imus was the son of the local undertaker, and he and a school friend were tasked with watching over a corpse while an Irish wake was going on, as the wind howled in the shingles on a stormy, spooky night. Imagine the boys' consternation when the 'corpse' ... woke up. Apparently the wake worked! (Interview conducted on Feb. 24, 1939. For the source documents, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001939/)

The most popular speculation — Vanity Fair magazine goes so far as to opine that he is “almost certainly” the basis for Jones — is Roy Chapman Andrews, a globe-trotting paleontologist and former director of the American Museum of Natural History.

Well, the fact is that Jones probably wasn’t based on any real person. Indy is the brainchild of George Lucas, the Star Wars guy. Lucas was a serious fan of pre-war pulp-magazine fiction, and the adventure pulps back in the day were full of characters like Indiana Jones.

But then again maybe he WAS based on a real person, because in the era Jones was set in, the real world was full of those characters too.

Oregon, too, has a couple candidates it could field as potential proto-Indiana Joneses.... (Fort Rock, Lake County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-02.luther-cressman-oregons-indiana-jones-630.html)

This was the town where the Eastern Oregon Gold Rush of '61 got started, and it was a wild and lawless place; town ordinances did prohibit stabbing or shooting people “in public places,” but otherwise the town was mostly wide open. (Auburn, Baker County; 1860s, 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1210a-auburn-wildest-mining-town-vanished.html)